ting, I crept up between them, carried out my enterprise, and
obliged everybody.'" This, however, did not satisfy Mr. Drummond, who
asked Bianconi to write down for him an autobiography, containing the
incidents of his early life down to the period of his great Irish
enterprise. Bianconi proceeded to do this, writing down his past
history in the occasional intervals which he could snatch from the
immense business which he still continued personally to superintend.
But before the "Drummond memoir" could be finished Mr. Drummond himself
had ceased to live, having died in 1840, principally of overwork. What
he thought of Bianconi, however, has been preserved in his Report of
the Irish Railway Commission of 1838, written by Mr. Drummond himself,
in which he thus speaks of his enterprising friend in starting and
conducting the great Irish car establishment:--

"With a capital little exceeding the expense of outfit he commenced.
Fortune, or rather the due reward of industry and integrity, favoured
his first efforts. He soon began to increase the number of his cars
and multiply routes, until his establishment spread over the whole of
Ireland. These results are the more striking and instructive as having
been accomplished in a district which has long been represented as the
focus of unreclaimed violence and barbarism, where neither life nor
property can be deemed secure. Whilst many possessing a personal
interest in everything tending to improve or enrich the country have
been so misled or inconsiderate as to repel by exaggerated statements
British capital from their doors, this foreigner chose Tipperary as the
centre of his operations, wherein to embark all the fruits of his
industry in a traffic peculiarly exposed to the power and even to the
caprice of the peasantry. The event has shown that his confidence in
their good sense was not ill-grounded.

"By a system of steady and just treatment he has obtained a complete
mastery, exempt from lawless intimidation or control, over the various
servants and agents employed by him, and his establishment is popular
with all classes on account of its general usefulness and the fair
liberal spirit of its management. The success achieved by this spirited
gentleman is the result, not of a single speculation, which might have
been favoured by local circumstances, but of a series of distinct
experiments, all of which have been successful."

When the railways were actually made and op